Hacker News Reader

> Sure, we'll see a decrease in gun related suicides... but the suicides will still occur, just with an alternate method.

Suicide attempts by any method might be practically constant; alternate methods of suicide tend to be less successful however, so the rate of completed suicides would likely go down.

> alternate methods of suicide tend to be less successful however, so the rate of completed suicides would likely go down

I don't see how that could be measured as a success. You still have mass amounts of people attempting to end their life every year.

Essentially we're all busy trying to treat the obvious symptoms, but we're ignoring the real cause of our problems.

Reducing legal gun ownership merely shifts the problem to another metric, but does not solve it.

Solve our suicide problem in the United States, and we've solved our gun problem (among others). (this hinges on the fact that there is some level of annual deaths that society considers reasonable and acceptable, as-is with any activity)

FWIW, the ratio of people:firearms in this country has a clear link to firearms crime(homicides included) and suicides, as established here: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and...

Legal firearm ownership isn't the real issue, yes. The problem that we just have so god damn many firearms and we continue to crank them out en masse whilst stoking fears of a tyrannical government instilling martial law and rounding people up into concentration camps(and by extension, our firearms are the only thing stopping this from happening). A sizable portion of the population all but worships firearms.

The fact that we are basically overflowing with firearms plays a huge part. Guns routinely go missing from gun stores. One of the rifles used by the Beltway snipers was amongst around 150 guns that went missing from one store in WA. Where do you think the black market guns(that bad guys will get their hands on anyways) come from in the first place? They were produced under legitimate pretenses that they were going to sell.

  as established here: (HSPH site)

Item 1: no link to study or data sources stated there, but data is at least 11 years old

Item 2: data well over 20 years old

Item 3: data 18-27 years old

Item 4: data 12-14 years old, and guns in circulation have more than doubled since then

And, ironically, all of this dates from when the Feinstein bans were still in effect.

You're right. The concentration of firearms can in no way affect the rate of gun crime in this country.

> Sure, we'll see a decrease in gun related suicides... but the suicides will still occur, just with an alternate method.

Citation needed; that's not the evidence I've seen.

Mass shootings are extremely rare, but non-mass crime is not; guns are also a big factor in whether disputes over e.g. property (particularly drugs) become lethal.

Most of the victims of guns are not particularly sympathetic. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent their deaths.

These days we've done most of the easy/cheap things we can do to prevent human deaths; there are few low-hanging fruit left. So anything we can do to save lives will be expensive and/or involve sacrificing useful things. IMO gun laws are one of the cheaper ways to save lives that remain available (I'd also advocate making driving tests stricter, repealing jaywalking laws and adding an assumption of liability when a driver injures a pedestrian).

It seems odd to argue that ~10,000 murders/accidental deaths per year is not a problem...

As to suicide rates, there are a lot of 'unsuccessful' suicide attempts. And many people do back out after taking pills for example. Which is why access to a gun does increases the risks of successful suicide.

IMO, this does not say much about the gun debate. But, https://xkcd.com/386/

> It seems odd to argue that ~10,000 murders/accidental deaths per year is not a problem...

It's about whatever level is acceptable to society.

We currently accept about 57,000 annual deaths caused by the common flu[1], a totally preventable and treatable illness. Heart disease claims over 600,000 lives annually in the US. [2]

Compared to other top killers, if we could reduce gun related deaths to ~10,000 annually, that's a huge victory. That equates to about 0.001% of our population annually, and at that rate it would take about 33,000 years to kill us all.

In no reality are we going to be able to make that number be zero. There must be some level that is acceptable (and arguably we've crossed that acceptable threshold currently).

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.h...

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

> It's about whatever level is acceptable to society.

I agree, you can see the US ranks fairly low on these statistics which may be good enough or a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... My point is saying something bad is at a tolerable level is different from saying it's not bad.

Spending more money promoting gun safety would likely save lives. As far as I can tell the cost benefit on that is simply money and would not impact freedom so the NRA may even approve. But, it's easy for people to look at things emotionally and say that's a waste of money because there is no problem.

PS: Your flu statistic is off. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979 Just Pneumonia is listed at 53,282 So Influenza is much lower than 57,000 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/pneumonia.htm

Though many of these deaths are complications not direct causes, you can die from AIDS and Pneumonia.

> Spending more money promoting gun safety would likely save lives

This is something I could fully get behind, and I believe it would have real positive effects for the general population.

I had the privilege to have grown up in a military family, and was active in Cub Scouts and then later Boy Scouts -- so I grew up around guns and was introduced at a very early age.

Gun safety needs to start early. In scouts, we had it beat into us how to treat a weapon, and how to be safe with one. It was taught the weapon was to be respected and treated as loaded even when you knew it was not.

Unfortunately, many gun owners don't have such training, and are unknowingly careless with their firearms. This includes people leaving loaded firearms in places where children can gain access, or showing off for their buddies, etc. Too often I've been at the local gun range and witnessed a new gun owner looking down the barrel or casually walking around with the gun's action closed and barrel "sweeping" bystanders. It's not their fault, they literally don't know any better... it's the lack of mandatory safety training (and at most ranges, you'll find staff and customers alike harshly coming down on these offenders in attempt beat into them some core safety rules).

Gun ranges are actually good examples of gun safety done right (most of the time). In the rare occasion where I've felt unsafe around a fellow shooter, the range staff have taken quick action. In general, even with all the guns at a gun range, it's one of the safest places to be around firearms.